A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion

"Ben-Gurion was the father of his country, the George Washington of the state of Israel. He was the leader of the Jewish national movement in the ancestral Jewish homeland, which between the two World Wars was the British Mandate of Palestine. He rose to leadership not because of what are ordinarily thought of as leadership skills—he was uncharismatic—but because he was a ferociously effective bureaucrat and headed the Zionist movement, and because he had an uncanny ability to anticipate the future. Ben-Gurion understood earlier than others in the Zionist movement that war was coming, and that however it turned out, the British would be forced to leave Palestine. He saw that that would create the opportunity for the long-sought goal of proclaiming a Jewish state but, also, that once the Jews proclaimed their state, they would have to fend off the assaults of their Arab neighbors. And, indeed, five Arab governments attacked Israel immediately after its UN-sanctioned declaration of independence in 1948. In order to ward off those assaults, Ben Gurion recognized that the Jews would need a proper army, something that they had not had for almost two millennia, and he set about building one. More than anyone else, he is the father of the Jewish armed forces, the Israel Defense Forces or IDF, which have kept Israel independent for the last 76 years. Ben-Gurion was also the first prime minister of Israel, between 1948 and 1963, and he was more responsible than anyone else for making and keeping Israel a democracy: to this day, the only one in the Middle East. The single volume that I recommend is by Tom Segev , an Israeli historian. He’s associated with the so-called ‘New Historians’ of Israel, most of whom have been very critical—in my view, unfairly so—of Israel’s founding. This book is non-partisan and straightforward. It tells you everything about Ben-Gurion and the title expresses the theme of his life, which was to secure a Jewish state no matter what had to be done. That meant no matter what compromises had to be made. During the Mandatory period, there was a proposal for a Jewish state being floated that gave the Jews very little territory, and the leader of the Zionist movement in Europe, Chaim Weizmann, said Jews would accept a state even if it was only the size of a tablecloth. Ben-Gurion was willing to accept a state much smaller than the Balfour Declaration had suggested and that other members of the Zionist movement wanted. He was focused on how to defend it and how to make it a democracy and a success—and in that he succeeded. I think the answer is no. First of all, the Zionists did not want to expel Arabs who were living in the territory that the UN designated as Israel. They asked them to stay, but local Arab leadership urged them to leave on the grounds that the Arab armies would defeat the Jews. Then the local Arabs could come back and claim their possessions. Arabs became refugees because their leaders urged them to leave and there was a war. After the war, the Zionist movement was unwilling to readmit every Arab who had left for fear of a fifth column. Also, during the war for independence, while the Zionists started at a great disadvantage, they gradually turned the tables on the Arab armies. Ben-Gurion was told by his commanders that they could capture all of Mandatory Palestine up to the Jordan River (which was the territory that Israel did capture as a result of the Arab attacks in the 1967 war). And Ben-Gurion refused. He did not want to expand Israel all the way to the Jordan River, even though it was militarily feasible, because he didn’t want to have a large Arab minority. He was always willing to negotiate with the Arabs, but they were never willing to negotiate with him, and that refusal extends to the present day. The Israelis have offered one generous peace plan after another. The Arabs and now the Palestinians have never accepted them, and have made clear, from what they say to their own people in Arabic, that their goal is to destroy the Jewish state."